EAST GREENWICH — The price tag to residents for getting rid of their sewage is about to get steeper — 41.1 percent steeper. The only consolation: they won’t feel the pinch until May.

The increase would bump a typical $400 sewer bill to $564.

“It’s all debt service,” which will go up 25.8 percent, said Town Manager William Sequino, who explained that the increase is needed to cover the cost of completing sewer service to all properties east of Route 2. It’s the first hike in three years.

The overall sewer budget will be going up 13.2 percent, even though salary costs will drop 7.3 percent and operational costs will decline by 8.1 percent.

In the past, residents paid less because companies with a lot of effluent, such as Cherry Semiconductor and Stanley Bostich covered a large share of the operating costs for the system.

But Cherry, which paid for 40 percent of the sewer system, was bought by ON Semiconductor in 2000 and ON moved the manufacturing operation out of state in 2004.

Bostich has paid for 10 to 12 percent of the system, but its production is down 80 percent, according to Sequino.

Now, according to the manager, the town’s biggest users are American Industrial Casting and a pair of assisted-living complexes, St. Elizabeth’s Home and Royal Manor.

The wastewater-treatment plant now handles about a million gallons of sewage a day.

gemery@projo.com